Sam Cooke – American Mastershttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters
A series examining the lives, works, and creative processes of outstanding artists.Tue, 20 Feb 2018 16:10:50 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.1American Masters Who Shaped Black Historyhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/american-masters-in-black-history/2900/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/american-masters-in-black-history/2900/#disqus_threadWed, 19 Feb 2014 21:18:55 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/?p=2900In honor of Black History Month, American Masters looks at a selection of its archive to highlight artists and advocates who shaped America’s culture, changed the course of history, and took a stand in the Civil Rights Movement to create a lawful and just society for all. Browse the archive of American Masters for more. […]

]]>In honor of Black History Month, American Masters looks at a selection of its archive to highlight artists and advocates who shaped America’s culture, changed the course of history, and took a stand in the Civil Rights Movement to create a lawful and just society for all. Browse the archive of American Masters for more.

1. August Wilson

Playwright August Wilson wrote ten seminal plays (“The Century Cycle”) chronicling each decade of the 20th-century African-American experience. Fences and The Piano Lesson both won Pulitzer Prices and Fences also won a Tony Award. Self-educated in Pittsburgh’s public library and streets, Wilson was influenced by the rising black consciousness of the 1960s and became a young, activist poet before turning to play writing. He founded the Black Horizon Theater in Pittsburgh and his collaboration with mentor-director Lloyd Richards led to nine original Broadway productions.

American Masters — August Wilson: The Ground on Which I Stand premieres Friday, February 20 at 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings) to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the playwright’s birth, the 10th anniversary of his death and Black History Month.

2. James Brown

James Brown Biography Timeline

Soul music legend James Brown (1933 – 2006) embraced the Civil Rights Movement with the same energy and dynamism he devoted to his performances. In 1966, the song “Don’t Be a Drop-Out” urged black children not to neglect their education. In the same year, he flew down to Mississippi to visit the wounded civil rights activist James Meredith, shot during his “March Against Fear.” From 1965 onward, Brown often canceled his shows to perform benefit concerts for black political organizations like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). In 1968, he initiated “Operation Black Pride,” and, dressing as Santa Claus, presented 3,000 certificates for free Christmas dinners in the poor black neighborhoods of New York City. He also started buying radio stations.

Learn more about James Brown, the subject of James Brown: Soul Survivor (2003).

3. Cab Calloway

Watch Tour Excerpt from Cab Calloway: Sketches

Singer, dancer and bandleader Cab Calloway (1904 – 1997) led one of the most popular African-American big bands during the Harlem Renaissance and jazz and swing eras of the 1930s-40s. He was the star of The Cotton Club – where blacks could perform but not attend – and after breaking the color barrier with his “hi de ho” hit, Cab was one of the first black musicians to tour the segregationist South. In a film recording, Calloway gave fans a tour of historic Harlem Jazz clubs, including the places where the singers and band leaders and dancers went to get the best fried chicken.

4. Sam Cooke

Trailer Sam Cooke: Crossing Over

Narrated by Danny Glover, the film features archival footage and interviews with Cooke’s family and intimates including Muhammad Ali, Lou Rawls, James Brown, Smokey Robinson and more.

Sam Cooke (1931 – 1964) put the spirit of the Black church into popular music, creating a new American sound and setting into motion a chain of events that forever altered the course of popular music and race relations in America. With You Send Me in 1957, Cooke became the first African American artist to reach #1 on both the R&B and the pop charts.

5. Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Fitzgerald Biography Timeline

Ella Fitzgerald

From her early days in Harlem to the upper stratosphere of international musical fame, Ella Fitzgerald (1917 – 1996) lived the quintessential American success story. Through 58 years of performing, 13 Grammys and more than 40 million records sold, she elevated swing, bebop, and ballads to their highest potential. She was, undeniably, the First Lady of Song. She received the National Medal of Honor in 1992.

Learn more about Ella Fitzgerald, subject of Ella Fitzgerald: Something to Live For (2005).

6. Jimi Hendrix

Trailer Jimi Hendrix: Hear My Train A Comin’

Widely recognized as one of the most creative and influential musicians of the 20th century, Jimi Hendrix (1942 – 1970) pioneered the explosive possibilities of the electric guitar. Hendrix’s innovative style of combining fuzz, feedback and controlled distortion created a new musical form. Hendrix first gained fame in Great Britain with his group, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and began touring U.S. music festivals in 1967. His renegade version of “Star Spangled Banner” performed at Woodstock in 1969 stunned audiences and lives on as a statement of an era torn by the Vietnam War and the assassinations of revered Civil Rights leaders and politicians.

7. Sidney Poitier

Sidney Poitier Biography Timeline

Throughout the 1950s, Sidney Poitier (b. 1927) made some of the most important and controversial movies of the time. Addressing issues of racial equality abroad, he made Cry, The Beloved Country, about apartheid in South Africa. He later took on problems closer to home in Blackboard Jungle and especially The Defiant Ones, about two escaped prisoners who must overcome issues of race in their struggle for freedom. In 1964, Sidney Poitier became the first African American to win an Academy Award in the Best Actor category for Lilies of the Field (1963).

Learn more about Sidney Poitier, the subject of Sidney Poitier: One Bright Light (2000).

8. Paul Robeson

Paul Robeson Biography Timeline

Paul Robeson in 1942.

Paul Robeson (1898 – 1976) was the epitome of the 20th-century Renaissance man. He was an exceptional athlete, actor, singer, cultural scholar, author, and political activist. His talents made him a revered man of his time, yet his radical political beliefs all but erased him from popular history. During the 1940s, Robeson’s black nationalist and anti-colonialist activities brought him to the attention of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Despite his contributions as an entertainer to the Allied forces during World War II, Robeson was singled out as a major threat to American democracy. Learn more about Paul Robeson.

9. Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Watch Trailer Sister Rosetta Tharpe: The Godmother of Rock & Roll

The year 2015 is the centennial of Sister Rosetta’s Tharpe. In 1938, gospel singer and guitar virtuoso Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1915 – 1973) became a hit when she joined the cast of the fall 1938 Cotton Club Revue, which headlined Cab Calloway and the Nicholas Brothers dancers. During the 1940s-60s, she introduced the spiritual passion of her gospel music into the secular world of rock ’n’ roll, inspiring some of its greatest stars, including Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Little Richard. Learn more her music and watch the full film, Sister Rosetta Tharpe: The Godmother of Rock & Roll (2013).

10. Alice Walker

Outtake from Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth

When writer and activist Alice Walker (b. 1944) set out for Spelman College as a scholarship student, she rode a segregated bus to get there. Walker dedicated herself to the Civil Rights Movement from that point forward and would remain active in that movement, as well as the women’s movement, all while pursuing her poetry and writing that led her to become the first African-American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for Literature.

11. James Baldwin

Film Excerpt, “Writer, Teacher, Preacher” from James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket

Words — both written and spoken — were James Baldwin’s greatest gift to America and to people of all races all over the world. Baldwin (1924 – 1987) electrified readers with his insights about what it meant to be black in America. He preached brotherhood, not violence, with searing honesty; his truth was laced with pain and anger. But he never lost hope – and his clarion call for human equality, human progress, helped shape America’s history.

12. Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston Biography Timeline

Zora Neale Hurston (1938). Photo by Carl Van Vechten.

The diverse accomplishments of anthropologist and author Zora Neale Hurston (1891 – 1960) include novels such as Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) and Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939) and anthropological research in the American South and Caribbean, which she documented on film and in books and articles. She wrote: “I have never liked stale phrases and bodyless courage. I have the nerve to walk my own way, however hard, in my search for reality, rather than climb upon the rattling wagon of wishful illusions.”

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/american-masters-in-black-history/2900/feed/0 Interview with Narrator Danny Gloverhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/sam-cooke-interview-with-narrator-danny-glover/1526/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/sam-cooke-interview-with-narrator-danny-glover/1526/#disqus_threadThu, 07 Jan 2010 20:00:58 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/?p=1526Actor (and narrator of Sam Cooke: Crossing Over) Danny Glover discusses the first time he heard Sam Cooke’s music, the social context in which Sam released his records, and the collective journey on which Sam’s music takes us. Interview conducted by John Antonelli

]]>Actor (and narrator of Sam Cooke: Crossing Over) Danny Glover discusses the first time he heard Sam Cooke’s music, the social context in which Sam released his records, and the collective journey on which Sam’s music takes us.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/sam-cooke-interview-with-producer-d-channsin-berry/1517/feed/27 Liner Notes by Lee Hildebrandhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/sam-cooke-liner-notes-by-lee-hildebrand/1513/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/sam-cooke-liner-notes-by-lee-hildebrand/1513/#disqus_threadTue, 05 Jan 2010 16:11:46 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/?p=1513The following essay comes from Specialty Records’ 1991 collection, “Sam Cooke with the Soul Stirrers,” currently available through Concord Music Group. Sam Cooke has arguably been the most influential singer of the past four decades. Today, 26 years after his tragic death, elements of his unique style continue to reverberate through pop, soul, gospel, reggae, […]

]]>The following essay comes from Specialty Records’ 1991 collection, “Sam Cooke with the Soul Stirrers,” currently available through Concord Music Group.

Sam Cooke has arguably been the most influential singer of the past four decades. Today, 26 years after his tragic death, elements of his unique style continue to reverberate through pop, soul, gospel, reggae, and even bluegrass music. “He’s got to be the best singer that ever lived, bar none,” legendary record producer Jerry Wexler has stated. “Modulation, shading, dynamics, progression, emotion, every essential quality—he had it all.”

Born Sam Cook (the “e” was added later) on January 22, 1931 in Clarksdale, Mississippi, the son of the Reverend Charles Cook, Sr. and Annie May Cook, he moved to Chicago with his family in 1933. As a boy, he sang with his brothers Charles, Jr. and L.C. and sisters Mary and Hattie in a gospel group called the Singing Children.

At age 15, while attending Chicago’s Wendell Phillips High School, Sam became the lead singer of the Highway Q.C.’s, a teenage gospel quartet. Organized by Charles W. Copland at Highway Baptist Church in Chicago, the now-famous group’s early members included (besides Sam) Marvin Jones, brothers Charles, Curtis, and Lee Richards, and Copland’s son Credeal.

Charles Copland’s daughter was dating baritone singer R.B. Robinson of the Soul Stirrers at the time, and Robinson and other members of the nationally renowned Chicago-based quartet began tutoring the Q.C.’s. The younger group became sort of a little league version of the older and would provide it with future members, including Sam Cooke and Johnnie Taylor.

The Soul Stirrers had started out as teenagers too—in 1926 in Trinity, Texas. In 1937, a year after making their recording debut for the Library of Congress, they added a fifth member, R.H. Harris, who took the group in new musical directions. He moved the Soul Stirrers away from the old-fashioned jubilee style and into modern gospel and introduced the concept of having a second lead singer, which enabled four-part harmony to be maintained behind the alternating leads. With Harris at the helm—his soaring, sometimes sweet, sometimes gritty tenor often phrasing in delayed time—the Soul Stirrers became the most influential male gospel group in America by the mid-Forties.

When Harris quit at the end of 1950, Soul Stirrers’ manager and tenor harmony singer S. R. Crain (the only surviving member of the 1926 edition) recruited Cooke to take Harris’s place. Although Cooke once stated that he had no conscious vocal influences, he sometimes sounded uncannily like Harris at the beginning of his tenure with the group. “He was closer to me than anybody I know,” Harris has stated.

Yet it was clear even at the start that Cooke was no mere Harris imitator. His effortlessly floating vocal manner, marked by wondrous rhythmic and melodic invention, became increasingly pronounced as he settled into his role as the Soul Stirrers’ star lead.

“He made a change about ’53 or ’54,” Harris said. “He made a change in the yodel. See, the yodel is originally mine, but he perfected another sound and that’s the thing that really made a difference between him and myself. He was one of the greatest verse singers there was. His diction and pronunciation was perfect.”

“Sam was about the best singer that I sung with in the Soul Stirrers—better than Harris,” said Paul Foster. As the group’s second lead singer from 1949 to 1963, Foster had worked alongside Harris and Cooke, as well a such subsequent first leads as Johnnie Taylor and Jimmy Outler.

Besides being a brilliant vocalist, Cooke was a prolific songwriter. “Songs would just come to him,” Foster recalled. Although Crain was also a gifted composer, it was Cooke who provided the majority of the group’s original material during his six-year stay, including such classics as “Nearer to Thee,” “Be with Me Jesus,” “Touch the Hem of his Garment,” and “That’s Heaven to Me.”

Just 19 when he joined the Soul Stirrers, Cooke gave the veteran group its first sex symbol. Teenagers began attending performances in increasing numbers. “He was more acceptable to the younger people,” Harris explained. “He was about the popularest singer that was out there at the time because he was young, nice-looking, and very friendly,” added Foster.

This Specialty Records collection presents 20 of Cooke’s finest performances with the Soul Stirrers, plus five of his earliest pop sides, tracing in chronological order the development of his style over a six-year period.

It begins with his very first recording, “Peace in the Valley” from March 1, 1951, on which Cooke sounds remarkably like Harris. Yet on “Jesus Gave Me Water” (available on Specialty 2137) from the same session, the seeds of Cooke’s own style become more evident. By 1953, it had crystallized. While retaining some of his gritty edge, Cooke’s phrasing became increasingly lilting, soaring gracefully over the background harmony chants. On that year’s “Come and Go to That Land,” he marvelously dissects the word “joy,” repeating it over and over, each time differently and more joyous. His trademark “whoa-ooh-oh-oh-oh” yodel makes its first appearance on “He’ll Make a Way” from the following year.

The second lead voice on many of these Soul Stirrers selections is that of Paul Foster, whose often raspy and shouting delivery is in marked contrast to Cooke’s liquid style. (The close interaction between the two on 1956’s “Must Jesus Bear This Cross Alone?” is especially stirring.) They formed the most popular double-play team in gospel music during the Fifties, yet Cooke had other ambitions, which he confided to Foster one night.

“We was sharing rooms together,” Foster recalled. “I was sitting up looking at TV, and he said, ‘You know, Paul, I’m thinking about going out for myself. I think I made it about as far as I wanna go in the spiritual field. I want to get out in the pop field and make a name for myself. I want to have, not a Soul Stirrers name, but a Sam Cooke name, and I would like for you to come with me.’ I said, ‘I would like very well to go with you, but that’s not my field. I don’t think I’d like it over there. I feel more safety on this side.’”

Cooke cut his initial pop sessions for Specialty while still a member of the Soul Stirrers. The first was “Loveable,” modeled in part on his Soul Stirrers classic, “Wonderful.” In order to hide Cooke’s identity from the ever-critical gospel audience, the label issued it as by “Dale Cook.”

Specialty owner Art Rupe was not pleased with Cooke’s new direction. A dispute developed, resulting in Cooke’s release from his contract with the label. The settlement also enabled producer Bumps Blackwell to take some of the demos he’d been working on with Cooke, including “You Send Me,” to another label. As “You Send Me” climbed the charts, Specialty took another demo still in its possession, “I’ll Come Running Back to You,” which had originally featured just Cooke and his guitar, and overdubbed it with a band and a vocal group. The result placed #1 on the R&B chart and at #18 pop.

Between 1957 and 1965, Sam Cooke scored 29 Top 40 hits on the pop charts and 34 on the R&B charts, with “You Send Me” placing at #1 on both. He became the idol of a generation of pop music fans, both black and white, and was eventually characterized as “the man who invented soul.” His seminal Specialty sides remain, however, the crowning artistic achievements of his too-brief career. Listen, and hear for yourself.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/sam-cooke-liner-notes-by-lee-hildebrand/1513/feed/3 Crossing Overhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/sam-cooke-crossing-over/1506/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/sam-cooke-crossing-over/1506/#disqus_threadFri, 01 Jan 2010 18:08:13 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/?p=1506THIRTEEN’s American Masters celebrates the wonderful world of music game-changer and definitive soul singer Sam Cooke in Sam Cooke: Crossing Over, airing Monday, January 11 at 9 p.m. on PBS Watch a Preview Narrated by Danny Glover, the film features archival footage and interviews with Cooke’s family and intimates including Muhammad Ali, Herb Albert, James […]

]]>THIRTEEN’s American Masters celebrates the wonderful world of music game-changer and definitive soul singer Sam Cooke in Sam Cooke: Crossing Over, airing Monday, January 11 at 9 p.m. on PBS

Watch a Preview

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Narrated by Danny Glover, the film features archival footage and interviews with Cooke’s family and intimates including Muhammad Ali, Herb Albert, James Brown, Dick Clark, Smokey Robinson, Jerry Wexler, and more.

Sam Cooke put the spirit of the Black church into popular music, creating a new American sound and setting into motion a chain of events that forever altered the course of popular music and race relations in America. With You Send Me in 1957, Cooke became the first African American artist to reach #1 on both the R&B and the pop charts. It was risky for this young gospel performer to alienate his fans by embracing “the devil’s music” – but he proved, with his pop/gospel hybrid, that it was, indeed, possible to win over white teenage listeners and keep his faithful church followers intact.

American Masters Sam Cooke: Crossing Over premiering nationally, Monday, January 11, 2010 at 9 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings), features interviews with Muhammad Ali, Lou Adler, Herb Albert, James Brown, Jimmy Carter, Mel Carter, Dick Clark, Sam Moore, Earl Palmer, Billy Preston, Lou Rawls, Smokey Robinson, Jerry Wexler, Bobby Womack and more. The film is produced by John Antonelli and D. Channsin Berry and directed by Antonelli. Susan Lacy is the series creator and executive producer of American Masters. American Masters is a production of THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG – one of America’s most prolific and respected public media providers.

“Before Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke already heated up the charts with his unique blend of sensuality and spirituality,” says Susan Lacy, series creator and executive producer of American Masters, a seven-time winner of the Emmy Award for Outstanding Primetime Non-Fiction Series. “His smooth songs and sophisticated phrasing influenced artists from Al Green to Alicia Keys. And Cooke’s legacy reaches far beyond music boundaries. Spike Lee featured ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ in his film Malcolm X and the same song inspired President Obama’s speech. Who else besides an American Master can make such claims?”

Cooke’s career was tragically short, but meteoric at every stage. From early childhood, his silky, soaring voice electrified the congregation at his father’s First Baptist Church in Chicago. By the age of 19, he became lead vocalist for the popular gospel group The Soul Stirrers, heard in churches and jook joints and night clubs all along the Chitlin Circuit, from Chicago through the South to LA and back again. He redefined the genre and became gospel’s first iconic, and ironically, sexy superstar. Women began to flock to concerts to experience Sam, not Jesus!

Professionally, things continued to come easily to Cooke. You Send Me went gold, selling over a million records, and was followed by Soothe Me, Feel It, Bring It On Home to Me, Wonderful World, Cupid, Twistin’ the Night Away – all of which hit the charts within a two-year period. In combining two worlds, his constant challenge was to sing meaningful lyrics with the fervor of gospel and the romance of pop. He came closest with Chain Gang, observed and written during the Civil Rights era and with the poignant, biting lyrics and melody of A Change is Gonna Come in 1962, fashioned out of the depth of personal pain and loss.

Sam Cooke accomplished what no other black performer had ever even attempted, founding his own music publishing and record label, opening doors for and writing material for other artists – mentoring Aretha Franklin and launching Otis Redding. He had the courage to take an open stand against racism, refusing to perform at a segregated venue in the south and garnering the support of Dick Clark. But, his story ends abruptly at the height of his success when, at the age of 32 in 1964, he was, inexplicably, gunned down and killed in the company of a prostitute – leaving a profound legacy filled with extraordinary talent – and all the questions about what might have been.